365 Days....100 BOOKS

Wannabe Super Mom Bookworm........Challenged myself to read 100 books from the last half of my pregnancy,through having my 1st BABY and learning how to be a housewife & mom, till the kid is 8 months old...This proved to be too crazy of an undertaking as I am FAR BEHIND!!!

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Saturday, November 7, 2009

Brave New WorldThis review is coming a few days past when I actually finished reading the book...simply because I've been procrastinating putting my thoughts & exerpts "down on paper"...or blogged! Here we go! I enjoyed this book. It lost me in a few parts, but the ideas of the future Aldous Huxley presents are mesmerizing...I can see myself reading this book again down the road...it wasn't simply a checkmark on my challenge list! Here are quotes that stood out...

"Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean." Foreword, Page 7 I'm very surprised that the last line hasn't caught-on as a famous quote...at least it's not one I recognized...it has such a ring to it...

"...Brave New World is a book about the future and, whatever its artistic or philosophical qualities, a book about the future can interest us only if its prophecies look as though they might conceivably come true." Foreword, Page 9

The pregnant part of me reacted to this line..."And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over fifteen thousand adult individuals." Chapter One, Page 19 That ovary could definitely land its own reality show!

Keeping the children of certain cloned castes away from one of my very obvious favorite things..."They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives"..."though he could see quite well why you couldn't have lower-caste people wasting the Community's time over books, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably de-condition one of their reflexes, yet...well, he couldn't understand about the flowers"...Answer: "A love of nature keeps no factories busy."Chapter Two, Page 29 I better watch how much & what I read, or I might accidentally de-condition myself as well!

..."everyone belongs to everyone else." Chapter Three, Page 45One of the many mottos of the new world...and apparently, an expectation of promiscuity....!

Another fun quote against reading..."You can't consume much if you sit still and read books." Chapter Three, Page 50

"Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years' Way); by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 150." Chapter Three, Page 50 & 51 A.F. stands for "After Ford" ...the term "ford" replaces "God" in this novel....they revere Henry Ford for his manufacturing of cars and model the manufacturing of human life after his model....craziness!

"Walking and talking- that seemed a very odd way of spending the afternoon." Chapter Six, Page 77

My favorite scene is described here..."'That'll teach him,' he said to himself (the director). But he was mistaken. For Bernard left the room with a swagger, exulting, as he banged the door behind him, in the thought that he stood alone, embattled against the order of things; elated by the intoxicating consciousness of his individual significance and importance. Even the thought of persecution left him undismayed, was rather tonic than depressing. He felt strong enough to meet and overcome affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland." Chapter Six, Page 84

Great lines about motherhood here..."The spectacle of two young women giving the breast to their babies made her blush and turn away her face. She had never seen anything so indecent in her life"... But Bernard sees it differently..."What a wonderfully intimate relationship...And what an intensity of feeling it must generate! I often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps you've missed something in not being a mother, Lenina. Imagine yourself sitting there with a little baby of your own..." Chapter Seven, Page 93

"It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose- well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes- make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of wellbeing, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstances, admissible. " Chapter Twelve, Page 141

"Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against the misforture, none of hte picturesqueness of as struggle with temptation or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand." Chapter Sixteen, Page 174

I hated the ending...but wasn't surprised by it...if I had to live in "The Brave New World", I'd have likely ended-up with the same fate......